I did so on at least one occassion, so I don't think that's the cause of the problem. I'm inclined to think it is probably related to my firewall. The FAQ says XAMPP uses a firewall, which I presume is meant to mean that it makes use of a firewall, if one installed.

On one ocassion I got: "Mysql shutdown ... mysql\bin\mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed error: 'Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)' Check that mysql is running on localhost and that the port is 3306. You can check this by doing 'telnet localhost 3306'"

Running telnet localhost 3306 produced: "Connecting To localhost ... Could not open connection to the host, or port 3306. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it."

Naturally, I prefer to have my firewall on, when accessing the Internet. So I turned it off, when offline and then started XAMPP then tried to get MySQL working. I'm still trying to figure out how to open ports 80 and 3306 for internal connections (as instructed in the FAQ) as I'm not yet familiar with the more complicated vagaries of my firewall. The FAQ says to configure my browser "to go around local addresses", but I don't really know how to do that either. As you've probably gathered, I'm on a bit of a steep learning curve here, so would naturally appreciate any further help that is offered.

JonathanS wrote:<edited>I feel so stupid not to ask, but by anychance are you using http://localhost/ or https://localhost/ ?</edited>

I've tried both 127.0.0.1 and localhost (as instructed by the FAQ) but not https. Which should I be using?

BTW - I won't be able to carry out any further experimentation with XAMPP until tomorrow now, but would welcome your (or anyone else's) additional comments.

rdh wrote:Naturally, I prefer to have my firewall on, when accessing the Internet. So I turned it off, when offline and then started XAMPP then tried to get MySQL working. I'm still trying to figure out how to open ports 80 and 3306 for internal connections (as instructed in the FAQ) as I'm not yet familiar with the more complicated vagaries of my firewall. The FAQ says to configure my browser "to go around local addresses", but I don't really know how to do that either. As you've probably gathered, I'm on a bit of a steep learning curve here, so would naturally appreciate any further help that is offered.

No, no; Just I think it says something like 'Warning these are NOT valid if using https://"

For the most part, I didn't pay attention and had to go back and look;
just wondering if it was not only me who skipped past it

As for the firewall, IMHO shouldn't be interfering;
What O/S are you running? If XP, does it have SP2 installed?

More on the firewall isssue, I have Sygate Personal Free edition,
and it works perfectly. Except when I run the 'xampp_start.exe' or
'start_without_browser.exe' file, it askes if I want to allow connections to
Apache and so forth. (For some odd reason if I use the .EXE files to start, the firewall won't pick up on it).

If there's an issue between SP2 and XAMPP then I could install the latter on my notebook PC, which does have SP2 installed, however it would be more convenient to use it on my desktop PC.

BTW - Since I downloaded and installed XAMPP, I've discovered that O'Reilly's 'PHP and MySQL' book by Williams & Lane recommends EasyPHP as "the best integrated Apache, PHP and MySQL package for Microsoft Windows ...". Any comments, anyone?